


A Glorious Disaster

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Companions, Explicit Language, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Rescue, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Spirit Cole (Dragon Age), The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29402151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: Hawke’s never been okay. Nor have any of the people that became his inner circle. There is no right and no wrong, because all of them are right and all of them are wrong, and all of them together are a glorious disaster that never ends. Until one day, it does.
Relationships: Fenris/Male Hawke, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Kudos: 12





	A Glorious Disaster

**A GLORIOUS DISASTER**

* * *

They all had issues. Garrett Hawke was self-aware enough to know that he probably had more than all the rest of them put together. Okay, maybe not, but still, he was the furthest thing from perfect and yet somehow the rest of the noncomformists he called friends orbited him like the sun.

Which itself was hot enough to kill sometimes, so there was _some_ proof that orbited objects aren’t always perfect.

The more Crazy that came his way, the more he threw himself into it because Crazy enabled him to stop thinking and he had to stop thinking or he knew he would lose his tenuous grip on reality. Thinking only made you think, and to think was to sink.

Hawke felt the sharpened claws of time grating across his nerves, body aged far beyond the seven years it had been since Lothering had burned. He’d suffered guilt from those he couldn’t save, disorders of the heart and mind from what he’d seen and done in those ensuing years and what’d be done to him, in front of him, in his name. Never had gotten over the loss of both siblings and his mother. Tried replacing that love with intimacy, which never worked. Wound up alone because of it, sitting in the Viscount’s chair, wearing the mantle, gone into an oblivion he was slowly dying from.

Isabela’s devil-may-care attitude belied her overly sensitive, hurt and tortured soul. Fear drove her. Anger over past injustices. Refusal to make binds that tied too tightly knowing it took naught but a tiny dagger to sever, cut, leave bleeding forever.

Varric lied, deceived, obfuscated his way through life because his truth was sheer unhappiness. Laughed and told stories, drank himself to stupor to quash the hatred that had been years following his elder brother, stuck inside his shadow, only to be expected to wear the family’s colors after his own hands had murdered the only man he’d ever truly looked up to.

Merrill told herself stories because she wanted to be the one to reclaim, to save, to triumph against the struggle of the Dalish, of elves, since forever-time ago. She allowed herself to ignore, to lie within her mind that she knew she’d never succumb to the treachery of demons and then the survivor’s guilt, the slaying of her entire clan, all on her conscience, her shoulders, and after everyone had tried to warn her. She never listened. Still didn’t. Slowly being driven mad by voices from the past that would not be silenced.

Anders, friendship twisted to madness to acts of sheer insanity. Forcing the one man who may have genuinely cared for an abomination to end his life. Willing to die for a cause where no one ever saw him be hero or martyr, only villain and madman. Gone since childhood into a life of slavery no different than that which Fenris had endured, save for the color and shape of the shackles that bound him unto death.

Sebastian wanting nothing more than to be the man he’d been before forcibly shoved into a celibate, holy life. Clinging to a Grand Cleric that he secretly loved and hated in equal measures. Unable to become the prince of his dreams due to the falsehoods of his heart. Wanting to love, live, laugh. Obliged by his own circumstances to become that which he was not. To deny that which he should have always been. Pleasures of the drink, of the flesh, of genuine love, lost for good as though bound through his own will to that of the ghosts of family.

Fenris, fighting for freedom, never escaping, never beyond the reach of rage and the harem of hatred pulling him in with nimble fingers to the only type of life he’d ever known even as he screamed and strained against the white chains that would forever brand him _slave_. Happiness and joy not allowed. Love not allowed. All is pain, even pleasure, and loathing for who and what it makes him seethes and roils just beneath the surface like a volcano waiting to blow.

Aveline lost against the tide that turned at Ostagar, beyond the reach of the Templar she’d loved whose life ebbed slowly from darkspawn, quickly from her own hand guiding a dagger. Struggling against no memories of Mother save for impossibly long hair, losing beloved Grandfather to senselessness, saddled with a name and the expectations that accompanied. Trying to forget everything that was, had been, in the arms of another man who would never be Wesley no matter how her heart craved him.

Carver had been a hot mess from birth, convinced he could never find his way out of the long-stretching specter of his larger-than-life elder brother until he did, and how bittersweet the irony that it was Garrett’s hand to end his lifelong suffering, freeing him from taint and shadows and breath. Freeing him from Garrett. From being a Hawke at all.

There had never been a thought, a time, a day, when the combustion of so much fuel could peter out and be gone without taking half or more of a city with it, and so it did.

Hawke had finally lost the will to bandage wounds that were now so deep that limbs were disengaging permanently. Friends, companions, scattered to the winds, gone to their own callings, leaving him alone with his. Crazy coming to a head, a violent and beautiful and impossible to look away from explosion of color and sound that terrified and gratified and seared itself with permanence into the scars of a city-state.

Anders could never just be okay, live and let live or allow Templars to simply exist. Could not quash Justice.

Fenris could never just be okay, live and let live or allow mages to simply exist. Of which Hawke was one. Push-pull, hate-love, can’t-won’t-shouldn’t, not that, never a mage, _never_. Shut up, heart, begone the tantalizing picture of a future by his side.

Isabela would never be selfless enough to allow her sense of self-preservation to take a second seat to self-sacrifice.

Varric would never antagonize any view of a debate by openly taking sides so he would never have to feel the burning hatred of disagreement. Placate the masses, love the individuals, secretly nurse the wounds every word made to the flesh of existence.

Sebastian would never accept anything but blood for the death of Elthina, even if it meant flattening the rest of Kirkwall to find the man who’d murdered her. Even though he was now free from the life he’d never wanted thanks to Anders, he had to follow through on the lie, anguish turning to the fury needed to ensure Hawke’s hand ended a life.

Aveline would never again support Hawke or his friends or the horrors that they had unleashed and participated in. Not after Anders. This she vowed. Hated herself for. Didn’t believe in.

Merrill would never stop believing she could find the answers she sought, nor that it wouldn't be so bad to use blood magic in small doses if needed in order to do so.

Each of them so fucked in their own ways. So unable _not_ to clash except in those moments when protecting their own lives, and Hawke’s, united them for the heat of battle. Fenris’ Blade of Mercy would always protect Hawke’s powerful hands would always protect Varric’s Bianca would always protect Anders’ healing would always protect Isabel’s daggers would always protect Sebastian’s bow would always protect Aveline’s shield and sword would always protect Merrill’s blood magic would, for a time, always protect Carver’s greatsword.

Varric had started it. Hawke had held it together. Anders had ended it. But each in their own way had contributed their fair share to it. Nobody came out of any of that looking good. No one was blameless. No one was better than any of the others. No one could accuse or be accused. None were pure, yet all _were_ in the perfect human and elven flawless way that the Maker made them each and every one.

Hawke knew it was only a matter of time before someone in his city took him down as payback. So he allowed himself to die inside as he pushed paper and made even more decisions and fought even more fights and lost ground on the slippery slopes of Kirkwall with every step from the keep to his estate.

So one day he just disappeared from Kirkwall without a word.

And then reappeared at Skyhold.

And then disappeared into the Fade.

Only then, did Isabela realize how much he had cared when she wouldn’t allow herself to be loved as even a friend.

Only then, did Sebastian realize how wise his one-time friend’s counsel had been when Sebastian himself had never been able to decide what to do with his life.

Only then did Merrill understand what Hawke and her own Keeper had been trying to tell her all along.

Only then did Varric realize he’d lost the only real brother he’d ever known.

Only then did Kirkwall mourn for the loss of the man who’d cared for their city more than any of its residents had.

Only then did Aveline understand how painfully she’d turned her back on the man who’d essentially saved her life between Lothering and Kirkwall, giving her a place to go and even won for her the love of a new husband.

Only then did Fenris realize how much he loved the man he’d continued to push away simply because a Tevinter slave couldn’t stop hating mages long enough to see that _this_ mage had been the whitest, most genuine and loving of lights in an otherwise dark, miserably dank life.

So Fenris showed up on Aveline’s doorstep. And then Fenris and Aveline showed up on Merrill’s doorstep. And then the three of them traveled to Starkhaven and stole a prince. And then the four of them found a pirate ship docked east of Highever and as they traveled to the mountains together, they reminisced about Carver. About Garrett. About Anders. About Varric and Bianca and The Hanged Man. About Knight-Captain Cullen and Knight-Commander Meredith. About Flemeth and slavers. About Hadriana and Danarius. About Gamlen and Samson. About Feynriel and Seamus. About Viscount Dumar and the Arishok. About the Coterie and the Carta. About the Tal-Vashoth and Ketojan. About Emeric and Keran. About Mother Petrice and Grand Cleric Elthina. About the Bone Pit and Hubert. About Leandra and the Dog. About Thrask and DuPuis. About Bodahn and Sandal, and Bartrand and the Invisible Sisters. About the merchants and the Gallows. About First Enchanter Orsino and Bethany. About Ninette and Quentin. About the Blooming Rose and the Chantry. About the templars and the mages. About Kirkwall.

At last, five of them reached a huge metal gate that stood between the frozen Frostbacks and Skyhold’s sanctuary. And a woman some of them knew, along with a man that all of them knew, along with the other man that Hawke had known better than any of them had, looked at them knowingly through its grates.

Leliana smiled in relief. Cullen’s shoulders sagged as though a great weight had been lifted. Varric nearly wept with joy. Hawke’s crew met the Inquisitor’s crew. The Fade was discussed. What happened, reenacted. Details shared. Plans made.

Hawke’s crew insisted, damn the consequences.

The Inquisitor’s crew agreed.

And the realm of the Nightmare was assaulted like no earthly realm before or since.

Every single one of them had been a magnificent mess. Together they created a glorious disaster that braved fear and the unknown and death itself to chase their shooting star, their equally fucked up leader, the man who loved them and sometimes loathed them in equal measure but had never turned his back on them no matter what.

This time, they didn’t turn their backs on the man they loved so fiercely that him just being _gone_ was not an option any could abide.

And when Hawke looked up, Nightmare’s despair sinking him between headstones bearing the names of those who had been his dearest friends now lost to him, he saw them coming toward him as one. Disbelief at first. Realization. Elation.

Arms around shoulders around bodies so that no longer was he the sole glue holding the disaster together but instead each of them was pulling their own weight, holding their own bandaged wounds together and binding themselves wholly to his as the sealing, soothing salve he’d always needed but had never gotten.

And now they had the Inquisition helping to hold them _all_ together.

For so long Garrett Hawke had been the savior of all.

Now they were his.

* * *

The Inquisitor leaned against the wall watching through windows and open doors the newest recruits to his merry band of glorified bandits as they reconnected in the tower given over to them upon their return from the Fade with their champion in tow.

He wasn’t surprised when Cole appeared beside him, sitting atop the wall, heels kicking at the stone.

_“Growing stronger, grieving gravely at graves, yet relearning love and laughter and how to live.”_

The Inquisitor witnessed Varric holding Hawke a beat longer than necessary. Saw Fenris hovering and refusing to leave an orbit that spanned the width of a marked elven hand. Saw the pirate, the Dalish, the prince, the guard-captain finding each other again. Watched Cullen and Leliana join them, joke with Varric that he was the bridge spanning them all. Varric smiled in a bittersweet way that tugged at the Inquisitor’s heart for he, too, loved the dwarf as did most.

_“Loving, leaving, loathing a past that all share but none ever really understood until now.”_

Reveled in the feel of his own Tevinter mage’s arms as they silently and supportively wrapped around him from behind. As the scent of his lover enveloped him, chin resting on his shoulder, relaxing at last at the end of a long, complicated, heart-twisting day. “You did good,” Dorian whispered into his ear.

“ _We_ did good,” the Inquisitor corrected.

_“They were hurting and we helped them. I’m glad we helped them.”_

Cole vanished. The Inquisitor took his mage to his room.

And Hawke’s glorious disaster simply became glorious.


End file.
